A View from Tsinghua: For China Politics is Architectonic

November 20 , 2017

Steven Bannon – the economic nationalist and chief propagandist of the alt-right movement has repeatedly warned that China's meteoric economic ascendancy will end America's supremacy in world affairs. Yet, perhaps paradoxically, during his trip to Hong Kong and Beijing a few weeks ago, Mr. Bannon met with an avid historian, Wang Qishan, to learn more about the ideas that shape China's foreign policy. Apart from his decisiveness in sterilizing corruption, Wang is also famous for restraining the influence of financial capital and tailoring it to the imperatives of the communist party during China's early “gilded age” in the late 90s. For Wang, Politics drives economics and not the reverse. With Xi Jinping's eponymous thought now enshrined into the Party, it is even more obvious that Politics stands supreme in China and the forces of the market are bowing to the Party.

To understand more about the operational core of Chinese party elites, the intellectual output of Yan Xuetong, the father of the “Tsinghua School of Thought” and a staunch “Political determinist” has been essential. Yan has for more than three decades analyzed the role of Politics in shaping social development and enhancing the dimensions of national power, setting up indicators and assessing the relative capabilities of the world's leading nations. Thoroughly examining the vast literature of Chinese political philosophy spanning millennia, he has defined Politics as the quintessential element of power. A vehement critic of “material determinism” Yan has declared that ideas and its manifestation through political leadership has been the key variable to understand the rise and fall of empires and the very survival of civilizations. Military, economic, and cultural radiance are important, yet it is political leadership that serves as a multiplier, and thus carries maximum influence over national power.

Yan has frequently – yet erroneously – been framed as a Chinese “foreign policy hawk” who prefers mightiness to righteousness. Still, Yan's books, reports and scholarly articles remain some of the core texts that Western analysts study to understand the intellectual foundations of China's Foreign Policy and its potential strategic or even operational developments. Two of his texts have attracted a lot of attention in the West. The 2011 book, “Ancient Chinese thought, Modern Chinese Power,” and a 2014 academic publication on China's foreign policy reform, “From Low Profile to Striving for Achievement.” Yan was the first scholar to highlight that Xi's call at the foreign affairs conference of the Chinese communist party in 2013 had been an inflection point in the history of Chinese diplomacy and thus it should be placed on the triad of “revolutionary” turns from Mao's call for a World Revolution to Deng's support on “biding time and hiding capabilities.” In an utter attestation, last week in the 19th Party congress, Xi daringly declared that China has now become a model for other developing nations to follow.

The fundamental premise of Yan's treatise about global affairs is that Politics is Architectonic and bears structural significance shaping both domestic and international affairs. While material conditions are still relevant for Chinese national strength, it is political credibility that can form a positive strategic environment for China's grand foreign policy goal to shape a “Community of Shared Destiny.” That community of shared destiny can only materialize when China attracts allies, thus abandoning the outdated non-alignment policy of “biding time and hiding capabilities.” The overarching principle for such a transformational shift of Chinese foreign policy must not be the single-sided pursuit of material-economic interests or “Mamonism,” asserts Yan, but political support springing from probity. It is only humane authority and moral political leadership which could provide an order that allows the fruits of human effort to flourish and attract key allies. Brut force and imperialism have only short-term benefits, if at all, and cannot build lasting bonds among countries. For Yan, wealth does not automatically transform into strength. “Our military budget is already 1.6 times that of the Russians but we cannot build the same military,” Yan once proclaimed to a Western author. “Our education spending is much larger than India's, but we cannot have one single person win a Nobel Prize. They already have ten. We have more rich people than Japan and we have more first-ranked companies, but we can't build world-class products. We have more foreign reserves than anyone in the world but we cannot build a financial center even like Hong Kong.”

Yan's political determinism is fully shared by China's most powerful statesman since Mao, Xi Jinping. When Xi rose to power in 2012, he urged senior party member to study the fall of the Soviet Union as a political phenomenon—not economic. According to Xi, the Soviet's political weakness, not its failing economy, led to the sudden unravelling of the all-powerful Soviet empire. Accordingly, during his first five years in power, Xi has solidified the political authority of the communist party, limited the influence of economic elites by empowering CPC committees in corporations, authored a best seller on the “governance of China,” and put political reform at the core of leadership. Meanwhile in his foreign policy he has promoted global development initiatives by creating new multilateral institutions like the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank that enhance the political legitimacy of China as a leader of globalization. His Davos 2017 speech along with solidifying support for the BRI stand as a testament to his aspirations for global guardianship, now enshrined in the Party's constitution.

The impact of broken Politics in the U.S.: human capital drain

Across the pacific, Trump's election and its impact on the United States strongly attests to Yan's “Political Fundamentalism.” The United States remains the largest economy in the world, its military budget outspends the next five countries' defense expenditures combined, and Hollywood continues to shape cultural norms globally. Yet in a sharp reversal from Obama's years, it is China that is now seen as a core tenet of globalization. It was the ancient Chinese political theorist and strategist Xunzi, more than 2,500 years ago, who argued that, “humane authority is the highest end of world leadership which is based on the strongest state leader's morality” relative to other contenders, Yan reiterates. However authoritarian at home, Xi Jinping, is now seen as a morally superior leader to Donald Trump. Yet Yan cautiously reasserts that moral superiority and political leadership should always be examined in a “relative perspective.” There will never be an “all-virtuous leader” irreversibly bending the “long arch of history towards justice.” Xi is far from perfect in his political moral output, but is currently seen as a better leader than the American president.

Contrarians would probably argue that “Trumpism” has only a momentary political effect without serious repercussions for U.S.'s global influence. Yan would counter argue that Politics carry certain degrees of permanency. In the United States, Trump's rhetoric has polarized the nation while at the same time his foreign policy inexperience and economic nationalism has alienated key strategic U.S. allies in Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, so devastating has his anti-immigration policies been that already, the number of foreign applicants to U.S. universities has declined. As Michio Kaku, an American Nuclear Physicist put it, the H1B visa and the ability of the United States to attract the best and brightest human talent have been “America's secret weapons” and now are seriously undermined by bad Politics. Meanwhile in Tsinghua, breaking from precedent, the top ten graduates of its state of the art computer science department decided to pursue doctoral studies at their alma mater and not to enroll in America's top schools.

In Yan's theory of political leadership, human capital attraction is the “litmus test” of national strength. Inspired by the treatise of the Chinese political philosopher Xunzi, Yan asserts that good Politics are essential for the attraction of good talent and good talent is the sine que non for a vibrant economy and strong national defense. If that held for an agricultural economy like ancient China, it holds even more today when human capital is a consequential scarce resource for innovation and technological disruption.

Leo Strauss, Donald Kagan and Aristotle on Politics

Surprisingly, Yan's approach to Politics and focus on probity, so absent from America's commander in chief, is also echoed in the thoughts of a Western scholar of extraordinary caliber. Donald Kagan, the intellectual successor to Leo Strauss, has framed Politics as architectonic drawing from the father of western political theory, Aristotle. His eloquent argument needs to be cited in full.

Aristotle, a man with as broad interests as anyone who ever lived; of all his pursuits held that of Politics as supreme. At the end of his Nicomachean Ethics he sets out the issues that most urgently require study. “Let us study what sorts of influence preserve and destroy states, and what sorts preserve or destroy the particular kinds of constitution, and to what causes it is due that some are well and others ill administered. When these have been studied we shall perhaps be more likely to see with a comprehensive view, which constitution is best, and how each must be ordered, and what laws and customs it must use, if it is to be at its best.” For Aristotle this work was of supreme importance. Every art and investigation aims at achieving some good, but some of these pursuits are subordinate to others, as bridle-making is to horsemanship, which is the master art, that is, architectonic. Architectonic ends are more desirable than subordinate ends, and the master end of all is the Supreme Good. That is the object of the most authoritative science, the science of Politics.”

Politics is the most authoritative science of reaching to the supreme good, as the western political heritage puts it, or to the “humane authority,” as the Sinic worldview defines it. Politics determined China's fate when admiral Zheng He's (鄭和) massive ships were burnt on the order of the Ming Emperor who arbitrarily sealed his country from outside influence. It will be Politics that tame unbounded markets, and determine the future of the global order, America's place in it, and China's lasting contribution.

Mr. Bannon went to China looking to learn more about the ideas that shape Chinese foreign policy. Yan would strongly have advised him that Political morality – at least in relative terms – is a necessary condition for domestic stability and global leadership. To be sure, Mr. Bannon is not bereft of historical sensitivity, nor is he untutored in political history. He has boasted about his study of Thucydides' history and highly endorsed the book to his subordinates when at the National Security Council.

Mr. Bannon is also naturally undaunted, with the right guidance and a moral imperative to radically reform his nativist ideology, he could perhaps tame the special interests that have taken over the legislative process of his nation, moderate extreme partisan passions, and guide his president toward a moral political direction. Perhaps toward a more inclusive and fairer globalization instead of a disruptive systemic shut down inspired by U.S. retreat. Listening to Yan and rereading Aristotle would benefit Mr. Bannon in his missionary zeal to save the nation. He could be reminded about “what sorts of influence preserve and destroy states, and what sorts preserve or destroy the particular kinds of constitution.”